Concept

The sad boy on the stairs, sitting beside the new toys that he won today and enjoying his last drink, is actually a descendent of a Leprechaun. He is sad and almost crying because the fun day at the fair has finished. The small winged creatures are descendents of pixies; their wings are translucent so their blood makes their wings shine, and little sparks fly from them. They are friendly but tireless in their pursuit of fun and a trickster who loves to play pranks on the humans they meet. This image shows us a bit of their life; like us, they have fun, jobs, dreams and feelings...

Sketches

In fact, this image appeared in my mind when I was falling asleep ... At that very moment I made the first sketch - the rest were improvements of the original idea (Fig.01).

Fig. 01

Colour Setup

The hardest part was undoubtedly the colour palette; the flash of inspiration that I had was very quick and I could not retain the colours of the whole picture. A bad colour choice could ruin the scene, so I carefully took care of every detail. The main objective was to focus attention on the sad look in the eyes of the boy ... That was the starting point!

For the Irish origin of the Leprechaun, I gave him green eyes. It was a difficult task to make everything that surrounds him highlight his eye colour and achieve the goal - those big, sad eyes. Large, black pupils show introspection, sadness and fear.

The large, pink environment stains the scene - in contrast with the green eyes - which conveys tenderness, softness, and at the same time a certain amount of fragility, delicacy and compassion. Small notes of violet are spiritual inspiration for these magical creatures!

The green pixie represents nature's power, whilst the blue evokes a sense of tranquillity and wisdom.

Yellow is often associated with food; this decided the colour of the fruit in the scene. The reason I put this yellow fruit on the right side of the character is because the area has more light, and shows joy and optimism. To counterbalance the bright yellow, in the darker area on the opposite side, is a dark blue mushroom.

Gold was used to symbolise the wealth associated with the leprechaun, and this idea was also worked into the fairground ride where I designed the carriages to be pots rather than tea cups.

All details were meticulously designed; their shapes, sizes, positions (everything points towards the direction of the eyes), colours, lighting and shadows.